Even Sony doesn’t know why PS4 is selling so well

At gamescom last week Sony announced that over 10 million PS4 consoles have been sold in the 9 months since launch. It’s a bigger number than anyone anticipated, and even president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida doesn’t know why it’s doing so well.

“It’s just beyond our imagination. We are so happy. But I for one am a bit nervous because we do not completely understand what’s happening,” said Yoshida in an interview with Eurogamer.

He goes on to say that Sony has had marketing people look into this early success, and have found that a lot of PS4 owners did not own a PS3, or any last-gen console at all.

“As soon as we see a great sales number, our instinct tells us we should be concerned about future sales, right? Are we exhausting all the core gamers? If we sell this number of units, there are no more consumers we can sell to. That’s a really terrifying prospect,” said Yoshida. “So we want to understand who are these consumers who we do not necessarily consider core gamers, who are purchasing PS4 and why they are doing it and what they are doing with PS4, so we can create a bit more of a positive future, rather than saying, wow, we have sold to every single core gamer. So that’s what we are doing.”

In the same interview Yoshida said that although EA Access will not be coming to PS4 now, he will not rule it out for the future. “It’s more a business matter. I’m not directly involved as it’s a third-party relations matter. But I’m sure our third-party guys are talking with EA closely. And also we are listening to consumers as well.”

Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.